#skyhighnet

SKY HIGH? DAEMONVERSE? I’VE NEVER-- [falls over, revealing pages and pages of old documents, one of which has a half-finished sky high rewrite that i ditched because adding daemons didn’t..... add anything to the story and if i wanted to add more worldbuilding elements i would need to come up with probably a new plot as well; others of which live on my old laptop but include real dodgy photoshops of the characters w their daemons] oh you mean THAT sky high daemonverse

Will, friendly, social, trusting, loyal Will, the all-round everyman who barrels through life and occasionally leaves destruction in his wake through no malicious intent, eventually settles as a big yellow labrador. yes, she has superstrength and can fly as well. floaty dogs are Good. She only settles right at the end of the movie.

Layla has a yellow anaconda. Underestimated, a demon in her element, and possessing both the patience to wait things out and the strength that when she does strike, it’s decisive. Before settling, her daemon tends to take bird forms, cat forms, more ‘socially-appropriate-especially-for-a-girl’ forms. She settles somewhere in the middle of the movie, while Will’s in the hero course. He’s devastated that he missed it, and they decide to go to a celebratory dinner at her favourite place, the paper lantern. We all know what happens to those plans...

Zach, who is social but walks to the beat of his own drum, self-confident despite the environment he’s thrown into devaluing what it is that makes him special, and who kind of speaks like a surfer dude, is a galapagos marine iguana. He settles before the movie starts.

Ethan, who is very intelligent, works well under the right kind of pressure and can quickly adapt plans to cope with new information and use his prey’s elements against them, is a fringed jumping spider. He settles during the final battle, when they’re making plans. Throughout the movie, she takes prey forms like mice in an attempt to get away from bullies.

Magenta is a chinese pangolin. Sharp and precise, but also able to shrug off much of what the world throws at her. She’s settled before the movie. When she shifts into a guinea pig, her daemon disappears, and reappears when she becomes human again.

Warren, who prefers to be solitary but is perfectly willing to butt heads should the situation call for it, is a grey long-tailed goral. He’s settled before the movie starts.

Steve Stronghold, who is proud and while he’ll work with others prefers to do so only if they’re at his level (sorry, Mr Boy), is a tiger (not sure what subspecies, it may not matter). He settled during High school, probably around when the school was putting on Oklahoma!

Josie Stronghold, who is both fast and fiercely protective, strikes me as a long-tailed weasel (well, a mustelid generally, and this is one of the american ones).

Gwen Grayson has a common hawk-cuckoo. Sue Tenny had a shikra. (there’s a lot to unpack, here.)

Penny has an australian magpie, speed has an unspecified-as-yet viper, lash has a serval.

sky high + mincing mockingbird

sky high + mincing mockingbird

sky high + mincing mockingbird

ooh! a sky high request!

things to remember:sky high operates 80% of the time off comic book logicthat’s it, that’s the only premise we really need here to discuss hair colours

in the meta, obviously it’s a marker of his fire powers, plus generic bad-boy look - in-universe, it’s... pretty much the same. marks his powers. bad-boy look is a bonus, much like the leather warren wears (doesn’t catch fire easily. looking badass is a bonus.)

warren’s powers manifested, and a few days later, he noticed a spot at his temples that was far lighter than the rest of his hair; after a week it was a visible point of bright red. he toyed with the idea of cutting the black off right up to the red - he still had pretty short hair, it wouldn’t have been super noticeable - but his mom vetoed that idea in favour of giving the entire hair a once-over.

his dad had had blue tips, growing about an inch from the end, had had them since he first moved a snowdrift back in Russia. elemental powers often lend themselves to physical expression - a warning sign, perhaps, like bright colours on a poisonous frog. this is someone with potential to do great damage; tread cautiously. layla, with all-red hair and a sunny smile is a notable exception: like oleander, looking benign until its poison acts.

magenta originally dyed her hair as an experiment, to see whether or not it would transfer over to her guinea pig form, then decided it suited her and kept it.

the colour drew warren double-takes in the street when he was a kid - his powers manifested young, statistically speaking - but as he got older, the glances grew less and less. it’s not that uncommon to see a teenager with bright hair. as an adult, it’s more expected that you stop dying your hair bright colours, unless you’ve got a power associated with it. bathtub curve of interest from strangers

so, in a nutshell: the elemental powers he got from his dad are associated with the hair colour gene, which switched on when his powers activated.

No confirmation in the movie at all! We know he’s older because he’s obviously not in Will’s year otherwise he’d be in the power placement sequence, but how much older is left as an exercise for the reader. i mean, he looks significantly older but that may well be as much a function of costuming as actual age.

for what it’s worth, Steven Strait is only one year older (born ‘86) than Michael Angarano and Danielle Panabaker (both ‘87) (one-and-a-half if you want to split hairs, which, given that we’re talking about teenagers in high school could be the difference between grade levels), and people do often take actor ages into account when ages in a given canon are a bit more nebulous, but even then there were kids in the year below me when i was in high school that were older than me, so like. there’s a lot of wiggle room.

until this ask i had heard nothing about it, but apparently she was going to be “Elastic Girl/Professor Jeannie Elastic”. she neither appears nor is listed in the credits of the actual movie

the copy of the DVD that i have (as released in Australia, idk if there’s any international variance) has as bonus features

bloopers (featuring some bits that were obviously cut from the film, like after “the stronghold three, the greatest family the world’s ever known” a line about pinball and stitches continuing to be Like That in the detention room)

a different opening (featuring the OG royal pain, the commander, jetstream, and all-american boy)

a music video of Melt With You (which did feature an unknown lady in pink next to ron wilson bus driver in an ostensibly staff-like role, but i don’t think it was her)

behind-the-scenes (featuring mr medulla saying “yes i agree” and the directors asking “do you hi-five after a kiss?”, a pretty bad rap by “zach attack”, some excellent footage of will’s actor absolutely failing at running through a wall, )

behind-the-scenes: stunts (featuring the New Technology of computer-controlled winches for the wires (wow this dates the movie for s u r e), jetstream beating people up, steven strait being the real person who went into the pillar, and a lot of smashed walls)

there weren’t any Actual Deleted Scenes as such that you do sometimes get, and-- and i want you to know i did actually watch through all the bonus content to get this answer -- i did not see hide nor hair of kim rhodes in any of the bonus features. she wasn’t listed when they comedically went through the favourites and left will’s actor last when he was asking the questions, i didn’t see anyone likely-looking in the background of any of the behind the scenes stuff, and there were no other deleted scenes.

my pet theory supported by absolutely nothing except convenience of timing is that the character was deemed to be too similar to elastigirl (as the incredibles was released in 2004, and sky high in 2005) or a combination of that and her presumable stretching powers being basically the same as lash’s resulted in her getting cut pretty early on in the editing process. she may not even have had any scenes shot.